Is Everyone Really Praying?

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Two Minnesota cops and a paramedic were shot to death over the weekend as they tended to a domestic dispute.

The news story that I read about it had the headline:

“Thoughts and prayers for Minnesota families.”

We had the shootings at the Super Bowl parade. A young woman lost her life.

Social media was filled with people commenting about how fervently they were all ‘thinking and praying’.

Color me skeptical, but I don’t think all that praying is going on, and we sure the hell ain’t thinking much or we may have made some headway to stop the mass shootings.

John Mellencamp put out a statement over the weekend saying that perhaps it’s time to show the carnage.

Of course, Mellencamp doesn’t want to see the result of the shootings, but he has a point in that it has become way too easy to slap a ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ message on it and then move on…

…and wait for the next one.

I’ve done my fair share of praying through the years, particularly when I was a child and missing a prayer before I went to sleep was a scary thing.

I have a bone to pick with those nuns as they certainly traumatized me:

“If I die before I wake?”

They had me reciting that????

Seems kind of crazy, right?

And, as an adult, I have spent time thinking of God on much different terms.

God doesn’t care if my sports team wins.

He certainly hasn’t played a part in the evangelical strategy of solving the mass shooting problem that we’ve been having for decades.

Hope isn’t a strategy.

Turns out ‘thinking and praying’ isn’t either.

Finishing up the story about the police officers and the paramedic who lost their lives on that domestic call was something that instinctively made me recite a prayer for the people who loved those men.

Three more people lost to the war being waged within the borders of America.

My thoughts and prayers won’t make a damn bit of difference.

I thought about Ted Cruz.

He has sent out the same message after every single mass shooting.

If true, Ted and Heidi have been on their knees doing nothing but praying since around 2002.

“Prayer is powerful! Prayer works!!” I’m told.

Perhaps.

But maybe there’s fine print attached:

*note* - Praying doesn’t apply to mass shootings. God has provided you with the resources to solve the problem, but you aren’t interested. *end note*

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